Lindsey Jacobellis Is Like The Charlie Brown Of Winter Olympics

Instead of using these Olympic Games to exorcise the demons that have haunted her since her failure in Turin in 2006, when showboating cost her a gold medal, U.S. snowboardcross rider Lindsey Jacobellis blew it once again, spinning out and going off-course during her semifinal run, an automatic disqualification. And so it ended.

It seems, much like it does with her cartooned alter-ego, if something can go wrong for Jacobellis, it will.

Either displaying a morbid sense of humor or a case of outright obliviousness to what had just occurred, Jacobellis, in a bizarre acknowledgment to her colossal screw-up in Turin, did a truck-driver grab on her last jump, long after she was disqualified.

“I was just having fun,” she said. “Since everyone was waiting for me to come down, they’d be watching, so I figured I’d have some fun and show them I still have a deep passion for the sport.

“It’s unfortunate the rest of the world only sees this race and four years ago. So I don’t have a great track record for the general public.”

To say she doesn’t have a great track record is the understatement of these Olympics. Her nonchalance regarding her failures on the world stage are at the same time maddening and profoundly disappointing. She doesn’t seem to get it, and it is hard to tell whether it is ignorance or simply the fact that she doesn’t take the opportunity she was given seriously enough.

At least in Charlie Brown’s case, no matter what terrible hardship fell upon him, you always felt he was an innocent participant in the farce, that no matter what he did, he would always be the unwitting victim, through no fault of his own. And you pitied the beloved comic strip “hero” for that.

That is not the case with one Miss Lindsey Jacobellis. Despite their similarities, she is no hard-luck Charlie Brown. Although if some Little Red-Haired Girl had happened to approach Jacobellis after the race and kicked her in the crotch, I wouldn’t have been surprised. That was the Little Red-Haired Girl’s bit in Peanuts, right? She would walk up and kick Charlie Brown in the nuts? No? Huh. I wonder what I am thinking of, then. Oh well.